Washington University Libraries introduce Open Scholarship repository | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

“Washington University Libraries have announced the launch of Open Scholarship — openscholarship.wustl.edu — a new institutional online repository providing access to the scholarly output of faculty, students and staff from Washington University in St. Louis. The purpose of Open Scholarship is to provide easier access to the academic work of WUSTL scholars, gathering items in a single digital place. Developed following the Faculty Senate’s passage of an Open Access Resolution in May 2011, Open Scholarship is a further step in the university’s commitment to make scholarship and creative works freely and easily available to the world... ‘While initially we are featuring recently completed theses and dissertations, we will also add to the site publications that faculty and students would like to have made freely available on the Internet,’ Baker says. Currently, the site contains all of the electronic theses and dissertations completed at WUSTL since 2009 as well as undergraduate honors theses and the winning essays from the Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition back to 2003. More collections are soon to follow, says Tim Lepczyk, digital repository-metadata librarian.Even prior to the official launch of the service, the public site tallied more than 1,200 downloads of papers — roughly two downloads per item.”